Much of the progress we have made over the last year can be traced back to what Rose Renton started. Rose’s son Alex Renton was the first New Zealander to use medicinal cannabis in a hospital setting. After Alex tragically passed away, Rose continued to campaign for safe legal access for all patients.

While there is much to celebrate about those who manage to leave the country and fly back in with prescription cannabis, this loop hole is open to those who can afford it and it ignores the continued criminalisation of those involved in growing it and those who can’t travel.

The fury of cannabis smokers who continue to be hunted down by the NZ Police has finally erupted with a new radical pressure group attacking and graffiting Nikki Kaye’s Office and the Ponsonby Police Station.

in spite of the public’s readiness for radical reform, the leadership of the two big political parties have either refused to embrace the necessity for change (National) or taken refuge behind the poll results by issuing a cautious endorsement of medicinal cannabis use, while remaining opposed to any broader decriminalisation measures (Labour).

Cannabis is always in the news and it seems like we’ve been talking about cannabis law reform forever – to the point where the most interesting thing about cannabis is why the law wasn’t changed years ago.

Public support for cannabis law reform is growing, and it seems inevitable that it will happen at some point. It’s no longer a question of should we change the law, what should we change it to and how soon?

It is clear now that one of the arguments which will be deployed in the immediate future to oppose sensible reform of our cannabis laws, will be the Government’s previous insensible experimentation with synthetic highs.